Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The richest people on the planet got
even richer in 2013, adding $524 billion to their collective net
worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily
ranking of the world’s 300 wealthiest individuals.

The aggregate net worth of the world’s top billionaires
stood at $3.7 trillion at the market close on Dec. 31, according
to the ranking. The biggest gains came in the technology
industry, which soared 28 percent during the year. Of the 300
people who appeared on the final ranking of 2013, only 70
registered a net loss for the 12-month period.

“The rich will keep getting richer in 2014,” John
Catsimatidis, the billionaire founder of real estate and energy
conglomerate Red Apple Group Inc., said in a telephone interview
from his New York office. “Interest rates will remain low,
equity markets will keep rising, and the economy will grow at
less than 2 percent.”

Bill Gates, the founder and chairman of Redmond,
Washington-based Microsoft Corp., was the year’s biggest gainer.
The 58-year-old tycoon’s fortune increased by $15.8 billion to
$78.5 billion, according to the index, as shares of Microsoft,
the world’s largest software maker, rose 40 percent.

Gates recaptured the title of world’s richest person on May
16 from Mexican investor Carlos Slim. Gates’s fortune has also
benefited from a rally in stock holdings that include the
Canadian National Railway Co. and sanitizing-products maker
Ecolab Inc., which rose 34 percent and 45 percent respectively.

Four Seasons

Most of Gates’s assets are held in Cascade Investment LLC,
an entity through which he owns stakes in about three dozen
publicly traded companies and several closely held businesses,
including Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Corbis Corp., a
photo-archive company. Less than a quarter of Gates’s fortune is
held in Microsoft. He’s donated $28 billion to the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation.

John Pinette, a spokesman for Gates, declined to comment.

Global stocks soared in 2013 for the best annual gain since
2009, with the MSCI World Index advancing 24 percent during the
year to close at 1,661.07 on Dec. 31. The Standard and Poor’s
500 Index rose 30 percent to close at 1,848.36, its best yearly
gain since 1997. The Stoxx Europe 600 gained 17 percent to close
at 328.26.

Companies in the S&P 500 are worth $3.7 trillion more today
than they were 12 months ago following a year when Federal
Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke signaled the curtailment of
economic stimulus. The bull market, born at the depths of the
credit crisis, enters its sixth year fueled by near-zero
interest rates and conviction among investors that it’s finally
safe to own equities again.

Adelson Gains

Sheldon Adelson, founder of Las Vegas Sands Corp., the
world’s largest casino company, was the second-biggest gainer in
2013, adding $14.4 billion to his net worth as the company’s
shares rose 71 percent. Gaming revenue from the six operators of
China’s only legal casinos rose 18.6 percent to 360.75 billion
patacas ($45.2 billion) last year, Macau’s Gaming Inspection and
Coordination Bureau said today.

Las Vegas Sands had revenue of $13.2 billion in the 12
months ending Sept. 30. More than 58 percent of its sales come
from Macau.

Slim lost $1.4 billion during 2013. His America Movil SAB,
the largest mobile-phone operator in the Americas, dropped 12
percent in the first three months of the year after Mexico’s
Congress passed a bill to quash the billionaire’s market
dominance. The company finished the year up 2 percent after a
planned expansion into Europe was reined in, reassuring
investors who were leery about the billions of dollars in
investment the strategy would require.

Latin America’s third-wealthiest person is Colombian Luis
Carlos Sarmiento, who controls more than a quarter of the
country’s financial industry through four publicly traded banks
that form Bogota-based Grupo Aval. His net worth fell 7.4
percent to $16.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg ranking.

Nobody lost more of their fortune than Eike Batista, whose
net worth declined more than $12 billion during the year. OGX
Petroleo & Gas Participacoes SA, the oil company that
transformed him into Brazil’s richest man, filed for bankruptcy
protection in October. Batista was the world’s eighth-richest
person in March 2012, and now has a negative net worth,
according to the Bloomberg ranking.

Hidden Billionaires

“His loss of credibility is explained by not delivering on
the results promised when he listed his companies,” Elad Revi,
an investment analyst at Spinelli SA, said by telephone in a
July 26 interview from Sao Paulo. “There was a chain reaction:
he lost credibility in one, then he lost it in all of them.”

Bloomberg News uncovered 109 billionaires in 2013 who have
never appeared on an international wealth ranking, including
Lynsi Torres, the youngest female billionaire in the U.S. The
31-year-old heiress to In-N-Out Burger has watched her family
expand the chain from a single drive-through hamburger stand
founded in 1948 in Baldwin Park, California, into a fast-food
empire valued at more than $1 billion, according to data
compiled by Bloomberg.

Inhospitable Locations

John “Johnny” Morris became a billionaire by stitching
together shopping outlets for multiple outdoor sports and adding
a touch of entertainment to the mix. Since founding Bass Pro
Shops LLC in 1972 in his father’s liquor store in Springfield,
Missouri, Morris has expanded to at least 58 superstores, with
20 more planned. The company makes a variety of fishing boats
and house-apparel brands, and controls a chain of full-service
restaurants inside the stores.

Stephen Orenstein, 50, made his fortune in more hostile
environs. As the majority owner of Supreme Group BV, Orenstein
has overseen the delivery of food and fuel to some of the most
inhospitable parts of the world, including Liberia, Mali and
Sudan. His biggest business has been supplying military
personnel in Afghanistan, where contractors dodge bullets fired
by the Taliban and explosives set by insurgents.

Shutterstock Inc. founder Jonathan Oringer rode a 222
percent surge in his company’s stock to become the first
billionaire to emerge from Silicon Alley, a collection of
technology startups in New York. The 39-year-old founded
Shutterstock in 2003 with 30,000 of his own pictures and turned
it into the world’s largest stock photo and video marketplace.
He has net worth of $1.5 billion.

Beer, Blackstone

C. James “Jim” Koch popularized craft beer in the U.S.
and transformed Boston Beer Co. into the second-largest
American-owned brewery. It also made him a billionaire, as
frothy sales of his flagship Samuel Adams brand helped Boston
Beer stock rally 80 percent in the past year.

“What he has done is amazing,” David Geary, president of
D.L. Geary Brewing, a craft brewer in Portland, Maine, said in a
telephone interview in September. “He’s very focused, a
brilliant marketer and he sort of taught us all how to sell
beer.”

Jonathan Gray, the 43-year-old who runs Blackstone Group
LP’s real estate business, became a billionaire when shares of
the New York-based private-equity firm surged in May. Blackstone
stock doubled last year as the company sold assets and returned
money to private and public shareholders. Gray has a fortune
valued at $1.4 billion.

Musk Accelerates

Elon Musk’s net worth had the biggest percentage gain by a
self-made billionaire, surging 233 percent during the year.
Musk’s Tesla Motors Inc., the electric-car maker being reviewed
by U.S. regulators over battery-related fires, more than
quadrupled, helping the billionaire add $5.6 billion to his
fortune.

Palo Alto, California-based Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan,
with a $70,000 base price, kept its 5-star rating for crash
worthiness, the highest designation given by the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency opened a
review of the car in November after fires in Tennessee and
Washington state occurred when drivers struck metal debris.

Mark Zuckerberg was technology’s biggest dollar gainer,
adding $12.4 billion to his net worth as Facebook Inc. shares
more than doubled. The chief executive officer of the world’s
largest social-networking company sold more than $2 billion in
stock last month and donated another $1 billion to the Silicon
Valley Community Foundation.

Icahn, Gross

The fortunes of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of
Google Inc., surged about $10 billion each as the world’s
largest search-engine business rose 58 percent.

“Google is very much investing,” Eric Schmidt, the
company’s chairman and the world’s 118th-richest person, said in
an interview. “We’re hiring globally. We see strong growth with
the arrival of the Internet everywhere.”

Carl Icahn spent much of the year jousting with other
billionaires while adding $7 billion to his net worth. The 77-year-old financier battled with short-seller Bill Ackman over
Herbalife Ltd., and tried to snatch Dell Inc. from founder
Michael Dell during his failed attempt to take the company
private.

He also took bond maven Bill Gross to task in a fight
played out on Twitter, demanding the billionaire join him in
committing to the Giving Pledge, which encourages the world’s
richest to give the majority of their wealth to charity.

SAC Investigation

Henry Kravis’s fortune rose about $740 million this year.
KKR & Co., the private-equity firm he founded with his cousin
George Roberts, said in December that it raised $1.5 billion for
its first real estate fund, with most of the money to be spent
in North America and as much as a quarter of it in western
Europe.

“We think energy on a global basis is going to be very
interesting for us,” Kravis said in a November interview. “And
of course with the uncertainty in health care, that does create
some opportunities for us.”

The outlook was less rosy for Steven A. Cohen, the founder
of SAC Capital Advisors LP. While the company posted a 20
percent gain in 2013, according to a person briefed on the the
returns, the 57-year-old tycoon’s $14 billion hedge-fund firm
struck a $1.8 billion deal in November to end a criminal
investigation into insider trading.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called SAC “a veritable magnet
for market cheaters,” in an insider-trading scheme that dated
back to 1999. SAC agreed to pay the record fine and shutter its
investment advisory business. Cohen will still manage his
personal wealth, which is valued at $8.7 billion.

Asian Wealth

The billionaire indicated in October he may sell stakes in
Hutchison’s retail unit and Power Assets Holdings Ltd., Hong
Kong’s second-largest power supplier, to free up capital to
acquire more assets in Europe, where his companies have spent
$14.5 billion on acquisitions the past three years, according to
data compiled by Bloomberg.

The biggest gainer in Asia was Macau casino mogul Lui Che
Woo, who added $14.2 billion to his net worth. Lui’s Hong Kong-listed Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. has one of six gambling
licenses in the Chinese enclave. The company is the second-largest by revenue and controls almost 20 percent of the city’s
casino market.

China’s Richest

Galaxy shares soared 129 percent in 2013 as Lui and his son
Francis expanded their biggest property, Galaxy Macau, in the
city’s Cotai area to capitalize on record visits by gamblers
from China.

The title for China’s richest person changed hands twice
during the year. Beverage billionaire Zong Qinghou was eclipsed
in August by Dalian Wanda Group property and entertainment mogul
Wang Jianlin after regulatory filings showed Wang’s non-real
estate businesses are more valuable than previously calculated.

Robin Li, founder of Beijing-based Baidu Inc., dethroned
Wang in December. China’s most-used search engine rallied 77
percent in 2013. The crown could change again. The country’s top
four billionaires all have fortunes of $12 billion or more.

Ortega Buys

Amancio Ortega held on to his title as Europe’s richest
person. Inditex SA, the world’s largest clothing retailer, rose
14 percent during the year. The billionaire bought an office
building in London’s West End for 410 million pounds ($679
million), a person with knowledge of the matter said.

Sergey Galitskiy, founder of OAO Magnit, Russia’s largest
food retailer, added $5.3 billion to his net worth in 2013, more
than any other Russian billionaire. The 46-year-old has a $13.8
billion fortune. The country’s richest person is Alisher
Usmanov, 60, with a net worth of $20.2 billion.

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal remained the
Middle East’s wealthiest person. He ended the year with a net
worth of $32.4 billion, up $3.7 billion for the year. Aliko
Dangote is Africa’s richest person. The founder of Dangote
Group, one of the continent’s largest conglomerates, added $9.2
billion during the year. He’s the 30th-richest person in the
world.

“Billionaires are asking what they should do with their
money in 2014,” Mark Haefele, Global Head of Investment for UBS
AG’s wealth-management unit, said by phone from New York.
“Central banks will continue to be supportive, so equities will
likely continue to rise during the year.”